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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27244168">as a result of living or dying</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante'>dabblingDilettante</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ghosts, Halloween, Modern Era, Mystery, Other, Trans Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-09 01:07:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,404</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27244168</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A pumpkin in the woods, old Sleepy Hollow, and someone who can't keep his nose out of trouble.</p><p>Or, wherein Claude makes Ingrid a sandwich fitting for the dead and Ingrid finds a new way as a headless horse rider.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Claude von Riegan, Leonie Pinelli &amp; Claude von Riegan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>as a result of living or dying</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is silly, right now.  It might be more serious.  I wanted to post something for Halloween, so here we go!  Hopefully I'll have more before too long, but good Halloween.</p><p>I will say that this is modern, to the point of "Haha leonie and claude are roommates during covid hell" because I can't get the thought out of my head.  Just to anyone who doesn't want to read about something that does take place in our hell world.  Outside of mentions of that, everyone is trans.  Ingrid is they/them here.  This will probably deal with Ingrid having problems in her life at some point.  Thanks.</p><p>for  some reason i keep thinking about yue ni you and me with ingrid/claude because of the "i and myself we are all just ghosts very selfish ghosts" its kind of silly.  but.   just a vibe rn i think.<br/>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSPXSShg8vs&amp;ab_channel=%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A0%E3%81%AECo<br/>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e5vO1JlMfk&amp;ab_channel=Eve</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fall was meant to be crisp and strange, filled with the unknown, filled with mystery and strange shadows out of the corner of one's eye.</p><p>“This can't be October,” Claude muttered. “It's 80 degrees out. Halloween is canceled. And the one year I finally see people wearing masks out, they all have to be boring cloth without a hint of horror.” Dramatic, he held a hand to his head as he feigned falling backwards. A casual push sent his arms windmilling as he did fall.</p><p>“It's the new fall,” Leonie said. She was wearing the same medical-grade mask she'd gotten from work the previous day. He'd already noted the faint hint of blood that had eked through from how she'd bitten her lip in the face of another customer service nightmare. “Like it or not, the candy isn't going anywhere at least.”</p><p>“The candy is the boring part,” he answered. “There weren't even any leaves to catch my fall, Leonie. Heretofore, it's not fall.”</p><p>Though he could not see her mouth, Claude did watch the crinkle of Leonie's eyes as she reached a hand out for him to take. Her strength hefted him off the ground with considerable ease. Transition hadn't gotten in the way of her archery work and she could easily throw around his weight, regardless of what heft he'd built up after T injections.</p><p>Pseudo-college students as they were, dropouts extraordinaire, the two roommates were taking a casual social distancing walk that led past their old campus to the small forest and lake that surrounded it.</p><p>“It's the best we'll get for creep factor this month,” Claude had explained with a sigh before their departure.</p><p>The usual haunted houses were canceled and, while some people were still running them, neither were particularly inclined to attend the year's corn mazes or wagon rides, nor the old campus movie nights. There would be no trick or treaters and all through the house, not a scream would be shrieken, not even -</p><p>“You can't even think of a good rhyme for that one?” Leonie laughed.</p><p>“Listen,” he sputtered, “I'm not the one who took a summer vacation in Venice to study poetry, so I think that maybe. You're a bad person.”</p><p>“I mostly just did that to do archery on the school dime,” she said. “With how much you're thinking about this, you'll probably go stir crazy even with the streaming shriek night you've got going on.”</p><p>“You understand my plight,” Claude sighed. “And thus, I thank you, sweet maiden, for agreeing to go to the nearest abandoned forest with me.”</p><p>Leonie snorted again. “I need reasons to get out of the house too.”</p><p>Good a friend as Leonie was, she wasn't wrong. Claude was going a little stir crazy. He couldn't travel. Couldn't see any family, couldn't work normally, couldn't spend time with people, couldn't go out and casually eat at a small family diner because they'd all closed in the pandemic, and he – really, he didn't want to think about it anymore.</p><p>What he needed was a mystery.</p><p>The rustle of grass was something only he seemed to hear. Even Leonie's supposedly honed senses could see nothing. He waved as he walked deeper into the forest, only a shout's distance away. Though the leaves had not truly come to fall, the bark of the trees was peeling and gray. Claude ran his fingers across absentmindedly. Another rustle drew his attention to the side until he saw – a pumpkin. He raised an eyebrow.</p><p>Not only was it a pumpkin, the thing he found was a jack-o-lantern. It wasn't specially crafted, but it was fresh. Big chunky teeth and the fresh smell of pulp still present. Claude looked around. There wasn't anyone particularly close. No more rustling, not even from hungry squirrels or dying bugs. If a child or tricky teen had left this behind, he was surprised they'd run off so quickly.</p><p>“Oi, Claude!”</p><p>Leonie sent a jolt of surprise through him, but Claude bit his tongue and waved back at her. He blinked, surprised to find himself so close to where he'd started. As he started to ask, she zeroed in on the pumpkin.</p><p>“Free pumpkin?” Her eyes lit up. “I could do so much with that, Claude.”</p><p>“You want to take home a pumpkin I found in the middle of nowhere?” he asked, trying to enunciate with each word.</p><p>“...You want to waste it?”</p><p>“No, I just thought that you'd be averse to something like eating wild food.”</p><p>Leonie rolled her eyes. “Listen, it's not every day you find free pumpkin. Besides, as long as I cook and wash it, it'll be fine. We won't be eating the skin -”</p><p>“<em>We</em>?” Claude asked, but she went on as if he'd said nothing.</p><p>“And any bugs in it'll be killed when I bake it.”</p><p>“Leonie,” Claude said.</p><p>“Claude,” Leonie answered.</p><p>With that, the jack-o-lantern was in their shared refrigerator. Leonie warned Claude against simply throwing it away. Regardless of him offering to buy her a different pumpkin, a fresh one, she brushed off his pleas.</p><p>“This is a high quality pumpkin,” she said, and regardless of his requests for her to describe what made it so high quality, she didn't give much. “You think you'll find one that big at the supermarket?”</p><p>“I can go to a pumpkin farm, it's cool-”</p><p>“They won't have any good pumpkins left this close to Halloween!” she interrupted. “Besides, I don't want you to waste your money on something I don't really need.”</p><p>Claude wanted to say the money wasn't wasted if it stopped them from going to urgent care, but Leonie had already made him promise and by the time she went to bed, it was too late to reliably walk to the market to replace it. Though she was normally the first to go to bed, if not the first to fall asleep, Leonie valiantly sat on the couch, watching the kitchen until Claude finally gave in and chose to sleep.</p><p>Unfortunately, he was a light sleeper.</p><p>And someone was making noise in the kitchen.</p><p>It came slow, at first. A casual bump that made him close his eyes again. Water trips weren't uncommon. Followed by a loud thud of a door against plaster – the fridge, he thought in his tired state. But the noise didn't stop.</p><p>Leonie probably starting on that pumpkin. This early was a bit weird, but he wouldn't put it past her when it came to cooking. Claude yawned and dragged himself out of bed, putting himself into his Golden Girls pajama bottoms and Gamr Grl t-shirt.</p><p>“If you're going to start, maybe be a little quieter,” he yawned as he walked into the living room.</p><p>The only response came as a stop to the noise. Claude rounded the corner to see the fridge open. That was the first oddity. Leonie was someone who measured out the electric bill like clockwork. She'd use a flashlight before flipping a light switch. The other concern was the lack of feet below the door.</p><p>“Maybe she didn't close it earlier,” he muttered. More likely, he'd been sleepwalking and somehow went to the fridge. Claude snorted. Maybe he'd thrown the pumpkin away in a nightmare-fueled haze.</p><p>He peered over the edge of the refrigerator door before moving to close it – just in case the pumpkin had decided to excuse itself while he slept. Just a little joke. Claude was good at those.</p><p>As it turns out. The pumpkin had moved. Below him, wide eyes and no feet, was a headless specter. Mouth agape, Claude looked from the open neck hole down to its hands. It had the pumpkin, certainly. But it had also taken off the top. Where normally the candle would sit was a young face with bright green eyes.</p><p>If it were a proper movie, Claude would have screamed and then fainted. He wished he did. Unfortunately, he did neither.</p><p>“Have you … always been in that pumpkin?” he asked.</p><p>Though a headless ghost could not mime the usual responses, and the head inside didn't seem keen on speaking, he did see the body move in an exaggerated nod.</p><p>“Oh,” said Claude. “Uh. Sorry. About that.” He coughed. “Sorry about removing you from your forest, um.” He slid around the refrigerator door so as to look directly at the ghost. Now, it was standing – pumpkin still tightly held in its arms. “You're.”</p><p>He paused.</p><p>“You're not going to curse me or anything, right?” Claude pointed toward Leonie's room. He was loathe to throw her under the bus, but he did have to admit. She was the one who wanted to bring the pumpkin home.</p><p>The spirit clearing its nonexistent throat jolted him out of his evil thoughts. “Could you.” The spirit coughed again, this time more clearly coming from the pumpkin. With a sigh, it said, “I apologize for the mess.”</p><p>With that, the spirit threw the pumpkin on the ground. Orange flesh exploded more like ectoplasm than vegetable, coating the kitchen with a layer of unappetizing skin. From the mess, the spirit picked something up and placed it on its neck. Feet appeared below it again and in a moment, its translucent form became somewhat more corporeal. He could still see the ketchup packets he and Leonie has stolen from their last fast food binge through the spirit's body.</p><p>As it cleared some of the orange goop from its head, the spirit said, “Could you make me a sandwich?”</p><p>“A sandwich,” Claude repeated.</p><p>“A sandwich,” the spirit confirmed.</p><p>He clicked his teeth together in some form of thought. If he had any left. There wasn't much to be said. The ghost wanted a sandwich, and really, it was his household's fault that it had ended up here, digging its head out of pumpkin mash.</p><p>“I've got ham and turkey,” he said, holding the prepackaged deli meats in each hand. “Any preference?”</p><p>The spirit peered between the options with more excitement than he'd expect of the spectral sort. “Both?”</p><p>He shrugged. “You know what. It's your lucky day.”</p><p>Claude pulled the whole wheat bread he'd hidden in the back of the cupboard out and slathered the front and back in mayo. The ghost joined him at the slowly heating electric stovetop, a strong curiosity in its bright eyes. The pumpkin had somehow stuck to its blonde hair, messily braided back from its face. If he was asked to guess, he'd say maybe the ghost had been a young woman in life, but he wasn't the sort to make the assumption.</p><p>Least of all if it was a supernatural entity that could curse him to a life of his hair falling out.</p><p>That was already enough of an anxiety with the testosterone shots.</p><p>“You seen many stoves in your,” Claude started to ask. He paused. Life. Unlife. Death. “Existence?”</p><p>“Yes, plenty,” the ghost said. “I thought it was curious you didn't have one of the … gas stoves I saw someone else using. They were quite fancy.” The ghost's head phased through the stove into the oven. He could hear its voice echoing from within. “Do you have what they refer to as coils?”</p><p>“...I'm pretty sure, yeah.”</p><p>He toasted both sides of the slathered bread and heated the deli meat alongside it. Leonie accepted cold meats in her life, but Claude wasn't like that. Looking at the ghost's approval, he could sense it had a similar opinion from the giddy look of excitement on its face. When he placed the sandwich on the table, the ghost's hands went through the plate but still managed to take hold of the food.</p><p>“Huh,” he said, past the loud chewing. “That's convenient.”</p><p>“Mhm,” it said, mouth full.</p><p>For how awkward it was to stand and watch someone eat, particularly a person he could see the food going down its throat, Claude finally remembered to ask, “What's your name?”</p><p>The spirit choked, somehow, and said, “Ingrid.” A beat passed, and it said, “Just Ingrid.”</p><p>“Alright, Just Ingrid, any preference on pronouns or have you lived long enough to be able to shed such problems.”</p><p>Though the ghost looked at him with some confusion, Ingrid finally responded, “Anything's fine.”</p><p>“Really,” he said. However, Ingrid seemed resolute to focus on the sandwich over his questions, so Claude relented. “I'll do my best to be vague then.”</p><p>It could have been his imagination, but that seemed to make their eyes crinkle in something he wanted to call acceptance – appreciation – casual neutrality. Though they wolfed down the sandwich, Ingrid still took their time to stare longingly at the crumbs left behind. “I missed meat ...”</p><p>“So, uh,” he coughed. “Any reason a ghost is in an apartment at 4 am seeking out pumpkins and home-cooked meals?”</p><p>They jolted into some awareness of his existence, as if he had ceased to exist after giving her the sandwich. “I'd been looking for my head,” they muttered.</p><p>“Okay, fair, but I do have to say. Storing your head in a pumpkin off the side of a forest that is maybe a couple of miles out from a college isn't the best storage center.”</p><p>For how relaxed Ingrid's expression had been, their jaw tightened as he spoke. “I see.”</p><p>Some people would take the hint and stop talking. Claude could take the hint and ignore it. “So someone was hiding it from you.”</p><p>Irritation flashed onto their face with a grimace they fought to withhold. “I appreciate your help. I apologize for inconveniencing you. I will leave you to your business.”</p><p>With their words, Ingrid began to sink through the floor.</p><p>He could have said several things. Or nothing at all. Other people would tell him to keep his nose out of other people's business. But that wasn't his style. Instead, he said, “Claude.” To the question clear on their face, he went on. “That's my name. So you know what to call me next time.”</p><p>Ingrid closed their eyes for a beat, before looking back up at him and smiling. He wasn't sure if they realized how silly they looked floating halfway through the floor. “I hope there needn't be one.”</p><p>At that, Ingrid disappeared and all they left Claude with was a plate full of crumbs. That was fine. He was good at digging up mysteries even when people didn't give him many clues.</p><p>“Hope Leonie doesn't get mad at me for using her bread,” he murmured.</p><p> </p>
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